Part 59 Christopher Columbus and How He Received and Imparted the Spirit of Discovery

Part 59

Diego, who had been for a while in Spain, returned in 1512 to Espanola, and later new orders were sent out by the King, and these included commands to reduce the labor of the Indians one third, to import negro slaves from Guinea as a measure of further relief to the natives, and to brand Carib slaves, so as to protect other Indians from harsh treatment intended for the Caribs alone.

[Sidenote: Bartholomew Columbus died.]

Diego was again in Spain in 1513, and the attempts of Ojeda and Nicuessa having failed, later orders in 1514 so far reinstated Diego in his viceregal power as to permit him to send his uncle Bartholomew to take possession of the Veragua coast. But the life of the Adelantado was drawing to a close, and his death soon occurring nothing was done.

[Sidenote: 1515. Diego in Spain.]

Affairs had come to such a pa.s.s that Diego again felt it necessary to repair to Court to counteract his enemies' intrigues, and once more getting permission from the King, he sailed for Spain, April 9, 1515, leaving the Vice-Queen with a council in authority.

Diego found the King open and kindly, and not averse to acknowledging the merits of his government. He again pressed his bonded rights with the old fervency. "I would bestow them willingly on you,"

said the King; "but I cannot do so without intrusting them also to your son and to his successors." "Is it just," said Diego, "that I should suffer for a son which I may never have?" Las Casas tells us that Diego repeated this colloquy to him.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CHARLES THE FIFTH.]

[Sidenote: 1516. January 23. Ferdinand died.]

The King found it reasonable to question if Columbus had really sailed along all the coasts in which Diego claimed a share, and ordered an examination of the matter to be made. While these claims were in abeyance, the King died, January 23, 1516.

[Sidenote: Diego again in Espanola.]

[Sidenote: 1520. Diego in Spain.]

[Sidenote: Diego partially reinstated.]

This event much r.e.t.a.r.ded the settlement of the difficulties. Cardinal Ximenes, who held power for a while, was not willing to act, and nothing was done for four years, during part of which period Diego was certainly in Espanola. We know also that he was present at the convocation of Barcelona, presided over by the Emperor, when Las Casas made his urgent appeals for the Indians and pictured their hardships. Finally, in 1520, when Charles V. was about to embark for Flanders, Diego was in a position to advance to the Emperor so large a sum as ten thousand ducats, which was, as it appears, about a fifth of his annual income from Espanola at this time. This financial succor seemed to open the way for the Emperor to dismiss all charges against Diego, and to reinstate him in qualified authority as Viceroy over the Indies.

[Sidenote: 1520. September. Diego returns to Espanola.]

This seeming rest.i.tution was not without a disagreeable accompaniment in the appointment of a supervisor to reside at his viceregal court and report on the Viceroy's doings. In September, 1520, Diego sailed once more for his government, and on November 14 we find him in Santo Domingo, and shortly afterwards engaged in the construction of a lordly palace, which he was to occupy, and which is seen there to-day. The substantialness of its structure gave rise to rumors that he was preparing a fortress for ulterior aims.

[Sidenote: Negro slaves increase.]

Diego soon found that various administrative measures had not gone well in his absence. Commanders of some of the provinces had exceeded their powers, and it became necessary to supersede them. This made them enemies as a matter of course. The raising of sugar-cane had rapidly developed under the imported African labor, and the revenues now came for the most part from the plantations rather than from the mines. The negroes so increased that it was not long before some of them dared to rise in revolt, but the mischief was stopped by a rapid swoop of armed hors.e.m.e.n.

[Ill.u.s.tration: RUINS OF DIEGO COLON'S HOUSE.]

[Sidenote: 1523. Diego in Spain.]

[Sidenote: 1526. February 23. Diego dies.]

The jealousies and revengeful accusations of Diego's enemies were not so easily quelled, and before long he was summoned to Spain to render an account of his doings, for Lucas Vasquez de Ayllon had presented charges against him. On September 16, 1523, Diego embarked, and landed at St.

Lucar November 5. He presented himself before the Emperor at Vittoria in January, 1524, and reviewed his conduct. This he succeeded in doing in a manner to disarm his foes; and this success encouraged him to press anew for his inherited rights. The demand ended in the questions in dispute being referred to a board; and Diego for two years followed the Court in its migrations, to be in attendance on the sessions of this commission.

His health gave way under the strain, so that, with everything still unsettled, he died at Montalvan, February 23, 1526, having survived his father for twenty troublous years. His remains were laid in the monastery of Las Cuevas by the side of Columbus. Being later conveyed to the cathedral at Santo Domingo, they were, if one may credit the quite unproved statements of the priests of the cathedral, mistaken for those of his father, and taken to Havana in 1795.

[Sidenote: His family.]

[Sidenote: Luis Colon succeeds.]

The Vice-Queen and her family were still in Santo Domingo, and her children were seven in number, four daughters and three sons. The descent of the honors came eventually to the descendants of one of these daughters, Isabel, who married George of Portugal, Count of Gelves. Of the three sons, Luis succeeded his father, who was in turn succeeded by Diego, a son of Luis's brother Cristoval.

The Vice-Queen, after making an ineffectual attempt to colonize Veragua, in which she was thwarted by the royal _Audiencia_ at Espanola, returned to Spain in 1529. Her son Luis, the heir, was still a child, having been born in 1521 or 1522. For fourteen years his mother pressed his claims upon the Emperor, Charles V., and she was during a part of the time in such distress that she borrowed money of Ferdinand Columbus and pledged her jewels. She lived till 1549, and died at Santo Domingo.

[Sidenote: 1536. The Crown's compromise with Luis.]

[Sidenote: Duke of Veragua.]

[Sidenote: 1540. Luis in Espanola.]

Early in 1536 the Cardinal Garcia de Loyasa, in behalf of the Council of the Indies, rendered a decision in which he and Ferdinand Columbus had acted as arbiters, which was confirmed by the Emperor in September of the same year. This was that, upon the abandonment by Luis of all claims upon the revenues of the Indies, of the t.i.tle of Viceroy, and of the right to appoint the officers of the New World, he should be given the island of Jamaica in fief, a perpetual annuity of ten thousand ducats, and the t.i.tle of Duke of Veragua, with an estate twenty-five leagues square in that province, to support the t.i.tle and functions of Admiral of the Indies. In 1540 Luis returned to Espanola with the t.i.tle of Captain-General, and in 1542 married at Santo Domingo, much against his mother's wish, Maria de Orozco, who later lived in Honduras and married another. While she was still living, Luis again espoused at Santo Domingo Maria de Mosquera. In 1551 he returned to Spain.

[Sidenote: Columbus's privileges gradually abridged.]

[Sidenote: 1556. All Columbus's territorial rights abandoned.]

Whatever remained of the rights which Columbus had sought to transmit to his heirs had already been modified to their detriment by Charles, under decrees in 1540, 1541, and 1542; and when Charles was succeeded by Philip II., early in 1556, one of the first acts of the latter was to force Luis to abandon his fief of Veragua and to throw up his power as Admiral. The Council of the Indies took cognizance of the case in July, 1556, and on September 28 following, Philip II., at Ghent, recompensed the grandson of Columbus, for his submission to the inevitable, by decreeing to Luis the honorary t.i.tle of Admiral of the Indies and Duke of Veragua, with an income of seven thousand ducats. So in fifty years the dreams of Columbus for territorial magnificence came to naught, and the confident injunctions of his will were dissipated in the air.

[Sidenote: Luis a polygamist.]

[Sidenote: 1572. Luis dies.]

Immediately after this, Luis furtively married, while his other wives were still living, Ana de Castro Ossorio. The authorities found in these polygamous acts a convenient opportunity to get another troublesome Colon out of the way, and arrested Luis in 1559. He was held in prison for nearly five years, and when in 1563 judgment was got against him, he was sentenced to ten years of exile, half of which was to be pa.s.sed in Oran, in Africa. While his appeal was pending, his scandalous life added crime to crime, and finally, in November, 1565, his sentence being confirmed, he was conducted to Oran, and there he died February 3, 1572.

THE COLUMBUS PEDIGREE.

NOTE. Dotted lines mark illegitimate descents; the dash-and-dot lines mark pretended descents. The heavy face numerals show the successful holders of the honors of Columbus. The lines _a a_, _b b_, and _c c_ join respectively.

_Fadrique Enriquez_, Adm. of Castile.

| +-----+------+ | | Alvarez = Maria. Juana = Juan II.

de | |of Aragon.

| +-----------------------------------+ | | Fernando, Maria de = DIEGO, b. 1488, Toledo | =2= d. 1526. d. 1539.

| +---------+-----------------+---------------+-----------------------+-------------------------_b_ | | | | | Felipa, Maria Juana Isabel Luisa de = LUIS = Maria de nun. = Sancho = Luis de = Jorge de Carvajal =3= | Mosquira.

Maria Juana | d.s.p. = Fr. Pacheco, | | d. 1605. ALVARO =6= +---------+ | JACINTO.

JACOBO EDUARDO.

| =10= | CARLOS FERNANDO.

| =11= | JACOBO FILIPE, =12= dispossessed in 1790; the decree of 1664 reversed.

| | Continued to our day.

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